Project Management

A project is a particular type of process, where the project plan
(often in the form of a Gantt Chart or Activity Network) is the
process diagram.

Project processes tend to come in phases, such as:

Requirements: finding what customer of project wants.

Investigation: finding out whether we can do it, and planning for
this.

Development: doing the main R&D work.

Test/fix: ensuring the output of the project meets the agreed
requirements.

Implementation: getting the output of the project working in the
real world.

At the end of each phase, there can be defined things done (such as an
Investigation Report at the end of the Investigation phase), although the
order in which things are done within each phase may be less definable.

The two main keys to project success are good planning and good people
management.

Planning includes identifying all of the work that
will be required (it's often the things that are missed out that cause
schedule slippage) and fitting the tasks around holidays, people skills,
etc. A good project plan also manages risks, for example doing risky tasks
up-front to avoid last-minutes panics.

Another key trick in projects is
estimation (which fits into the planning part). Because every project is
different, estimating is difficult. Added to this is urgency of every
single project and the often massive costs involved. There is thus often a
lot of pressure from 'management' (and, often, customers) to do it quicker
and cheaper, and initial 'optimistic' estimates get cast in stone. What
has been called 'gutless forecasting' then may ensue, where the project
manager keeps his/her fingers crossed that the end date will be met, even
though there is absolutely no chance of this happening. The result is
typically a series of small completion-date slips, significant cuts in
functionality or serious loss of quality (or any combination of these).

Another
cause of project slip is 'creeping featurism' where either people in the
project add things 'just because they'd be nice' or customers ask for 'one
more thing' to be slipped in. All within the same timescales, of course.
And the project manager who wants to keep people sweet today but doesn't
realize the eventual effects, says 'yes, of course'.

People management
includes keeping everyone working on the project motivated and interested,
whilst simultaneously keeping the sponsors and customers satisfied that
everything is going well (which, of course, it should be). People skills
particularly come into their own when fires break out, which they
invariably do.